Inlay

She didn’t know how to drive in this weather; it rarely rained in Sacramento this time of year and she rarely drove at all. She fumbled with the rental car’s wipers, first turning on the hazards by mistake, then the blinker. By the time she found how to turn the wipers off, the rain had become intermittent. There was no way she was figuring out the delay mechanism. She was driving over the Bay Bridge, trying to put distance between herself and everything that happened in Sacramento. She didn’t need to look in the rearview to know that the gap between then and now was widening. Then had heartache, sadness. Now it was the rage she felt toward him that propelled her down I-80. She wanted to be over the bridge, out of this storm, away from the elephants on the road with her, this pack of Escalades ready to push her into the water below. She was dependent on this bridge, as if the road would close up after she crossed the threshold into the Bay area, out of shouting range. The rain kept coming, the traffic never moving, the image of him kissing someone else playing in front of her between swipes of the wipers. She turned the radio up to drown out the ka-chunk of the wipers and the rain splattering against the windows. Ben Folds crooned about an abortion while she calculated the distance between the middle and the end of the bridge. Ahead of her, a sea of red tail lights; behind her, everything she ever knew. She would not let the bridge – the thing that was supposed to deliver her to safety – defeat her. She pressed on, humming softly to the music. Ninety miles gone, who knows how many more ahead.